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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Its customers and how. Amazon is famously known as the Everything Store, where you can buy everything from battery acid to, well, statins. Like most websites, Amazon also collects data about your activity on the site, like the things you buy, the things you don’t buy, and the things you consider buying. It creates a profile based on those interests and uses algorithms to recommend things that you might like to buy next. Amazon is proud of these algorithms. (The total amount of data that Amazon collects about you extends well beyond your shopping habits, by the way.)Then there’s Amazon’s booming ad business. The company’s advertising arm now rivals the Google and Meta duopoly that has dominated online advertising for years, thanks in part to the massive amount of data Amazon has about what people buy, what they watch, where they live, and so forth. Amazon says it uses “cookies, pixels, IP addresses, and other technologies” to target these ads, which is why you can find Amazon tracking bugs on websites all over the web. These trackers could, for example, know if I looked up a health-related question on WebMD and use that data to tailor recommendations on Amazon, according to Christo Wilson, a computer science professor at Northeastern University.“There may be an Amazon tracker lurking on the page, monitoring what you’re doing, and that’s how you can potentially have these kinds of freaky advertising,” Wilson told me.Or, more likely, maybe it was simply a pattern in my purchase history. My grocery order that triggered the cholesterol medication recommendation included shredded cheese, salsa, tomatoes, flour tortillas — and, notably, ground chicken. Was this a tell? It is, after all, a heart-healthy alternative to ground beef and taco night was on the horizon. I also purchased the fat free version of Coffee Mate French Vanilla coffee creamer, which is delicious and cholesterol free. But do these purchases make me an obvious target for a cholesterol consultation with Amazon One Medical? And either way, should my Amazon purchases be associated with Amazon’s health care services at all?Amazon One Medical is a relatively new service. Amazon bought One Medical in 2022, and combined it with its Amazon Clinic telehealth service earlier this summer. Now, Prime members can pay $99 a year to gain access to care through Amazon One Medical. For $5 a year, Prime members can get access to discounted medications with the Amazon Pharmacy RxPass. While I am a Prime member, I am not an Amazon One Medical customer, and I do not use Amazon Pharmacy. So, considering my choice in my healthy tacos, an algorithm might surmise that, as someone who’s proactive about his health care needs, I might be
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